


The Phantom

by sylph_feather



Series: Phanniemay 19 [29]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Immortality, Introspection, Moving On, Oneshot, Phanniemay, Short, Stream of Consciousness, immortal!danny, phanniemay 19, pm 19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 04:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19099531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_feather/pseuds/sylph_feather
Summary: The Phantom stays, stays, stays. Nobody else does.





	The Phantom

In the far future, the Phantom is a confused being. 

It knows it had friends once, vague colors;  _ yellow-and-red _ next to  _ purple-and-black,  _ with  _ blue-orange  _ hovering. A general air of happiness emits from that smeared memory.

Other memories are less sure; some are that same happiness and love mixed with a dreadful  _ fear.  _ Often, there are two figures in those—  _ blue-black  _ and  _ orange-black.  _ He remembers their jewel-red eyes, staring at him with a mix of love and hate.

The Phantom dislikes those fear filled memories. When they come, he retreats to the safer ones of those two figures feeding, caring for him, vague blurs ever present in his life. 

The Phantom also knows he was once human—  _ more human?  _ It is unsure; even this form has changed. The Phantom knows that once it had human-looking parts from memory; it remembers its tongue running over flat teeth, remembers seeing human-colored flesh, remembers pupils, remembers a time when it combed a flat, clawless hand through its hair and did not brush long ears.

Truly though, it has no opinion on these changes. The only one it really  _ aches  _ for is those halos of light that mean  _ blackhair-blueeyes,  _ but it cannot remember how to do it. 

Sometimes, the Phantom questions whether the halos and the smears of color are just fake memories, dreams, created to justify its existence, its loneliness. Often, it shakes those thoughts from itself and continues to  _ drift.  _ (That is all it does, now). 

Most of all, it aches and misses the smears of color. 

There was a time when the smears were living and breathing— like he…  _ once was? Is?—  _ ( _ almost) _ surely. These times were the time when the Phantom breathed, looked human, and the halos were within reach— a gateway to a beating heart. The smears of color died, though— and so did the rest of those things. 

But the Phantom knows it was not immediate— because the people of memory  _ came back,  _ same-color but  _ different.  _ And so the Phantom still lived then, too— just…  _ less.  _

But the smears left  _ again,  _ of their own  _ choice,  _ to a place the Phantom—  _ couldn’t? wouldn’t?  _ follow. They said  _ come with us _ and the Phantom remembers the taste of the words  _ people still need protecting.  _

One by one they left, and one by one the Phantom lost a little more ( _ life-memories-Fenton-self _ ). 

Now only the Phantom remains, a shell. 

Drifting. Protecting.  _ Sort of.  _

Humans are adaptable (ghosts are not, they stay, stuck,  _ drifting,  _ one-purpose). The humans developed enough tech to deal with the ghost threat.

The Phantom is obsolete.  _ The people  _ don’t  _ need protecting.  _ Sometimes, it tastes those amended words on its green tongue, thinking of the  _ beyond _ where perhaps something not so lonely lies. 

_ But what if they do, one day?  _

That’s the awful question that keeps it. 

 


End file.
